Long gone are the days when Monopoly, Risk, and Squeezy Baptist dominated the world of board games. The age in which the good brothers Parker and the folks of Waddingtons had a firm grasp of what you played with the family on a Sunday afternoon are but a distant memory. Confined to the dusty ledgers of history is the time when you’d start such games enthusiastically before, after half an hour, flipping the board over in fickle frustration and slinging out a string of swear words at your nearest and dearest that even Gordon Ramsay would blush to say.
In this article, I intend to highlight some of the most successful and culturally significant of the board games to emerge over the past two decades.
Questionable Inuit – Contestants play the role of FBI agents who are investigating a crime undercover in an Inuit community. Through a series of misguided and offensive cultural slurs, agents rub noses, smear whale fat on unsuspecting postal workers and refer to everyone as Nanook. The game is over when all but one of the agents are bludgeoned to death by Anna Lambe.
Harpsichord A-Go-Go – Players race harpsichords about the streets of 18th century Verona. Points are earned for running over different members of a Commedia dell’arte troupe. The deluxe set of this that patrons could sponsor on Kickstarter came with full-size mountable harpsichords and a pair of harlequin pantaloons and led to fifteen arrests in Knaresborough alone.
Accidentally Kevin – This is a roleplaying game for up to eight players where the concept is not to be called Kevin. If either your actual name or character name is Kevin, you immediately lose. Should anyone accidentally become a Kevin they are knocked out. No game of ‘Accidentally Kevin’ has ever been known to have finished.
Why Homing Wyoming – This is a game about mid-western racing pigeons who are experiencing an existential crisis. Contestants play pigeons and spend the game trying to work out why on earth they should return to Wyoming.
Who Touched the Panda? – is a re-imagining of Cluedo (or in America ‘Clue’). Contestants have to work out which of the six suspects: Zookeeper Nigel; Little Jane Horse; the Duchess of Argyll; the Bishop of Dulwich; Martin Quintz the concession stand holder; or TV’s Anita Dobson, touched the panda, with what (a spatula, a copy of the Evening Standard, a bargepole, a toby jug of Rutger Hauer’s face, some bamboo, or a sense of moral indignation), and where (it’s left ear, duodenum, baptistery pocket, elbow, funny box, coxic, paw, an other paw, or its cat flap).
Universal have bought the rights to the film adaptation and currently Mike Leigh is working on the script with Janine Duvitski rumoured to have been cast as the panda. Anita Dobson has not commented on whether she would play herself or not by the time of writing.
Larry’s Lint – This is a two-player game where contestants go head to head to remove as much lint as they possibly can from Hagman’s navel without waking him up. The game comes with a miniature representation of Larry Hagman made out of soft plastic and weathered cow hide, that becomes suddenly erect if either contestant too vigorously jostles his belly button. The game is banned in Ghana but is part of the PE curriculum in Leicestershire, replacing hockey.
Sandi’s Significant Hole – This is a card trick game combined with a board game in which players compete to win tricks – each trick won translates to points, and the more points you have gives you more time to dig a hole in order to hide Sandi Toksvig from wasps. The first player to successfully hide the diminutive Danish comedian is the winner and is given a golden shovel. A sequel to the game, ‘Debbie’s Dangerous Ditch’, is due out next year and purportedly revolves around a similar premise to ‘Sandi’s Significant Hole’, but this time you are helping the lovely Debbie McGee bury her victim.
Let it Raine! – In a cooperative game of up to five players you all play the late Raine Spencer, Countess of Dartmouth, daughter of Dame Barbara Cartland and stepmother of Princess Diana. The aim of the game is to guide her in vacuuming all 90 rooms of the Spencer ancestral home of Althorp House without nudging a van Dyck, and before Earl Spencer gets back from Ladbrokes.
You’re in a Urinal – a devious strategy game, contestants have to successfully assign characters to different places along a urinal causing minimal social awkwardness. You can play anywhere from a five slot urinal all the way up to a ten slot stadium urinal. You draw a ‘urinator’ at a time from a deck of 50 unique urinators – each one has a designated wee time, a social awkwardness rating, and a preferred urinatory location. Decisions have to be made swiftly as urinators, like in real life, are not permitted to stand around and watch, but must be immediately slotted in.
Expansions to the game include: ‘soap, rinse, dry and go’ which incorporates sink etiquette, dodgy tap splash-back and the pot-luck of whether your hand-dryer is functioning or not; ‘Pub Piss’ which incorporates inebriation levels, lowering both ‘social awkwardness’ and ‘directional accuracy’, as well as whether they can be bothered to wash their hands afterwards or not; and ‘Cubicle Conundrum’ where seemingly ‘social awkwardness’ is eliminated except for when you draw a ‘floater’ card or ‘barren toilet roll’.
So popular has this game proven that the Olympics Committee are in discussions with the board game’s designers, the Norwegian couple Noah Inge Strasson and Henrik-Henrik Dahl, to have it as an event at the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane. Head of the IOC, Kirsty Coventry, stated in an interview with the BBC that the board game ‘very much captured the Australian spirit’.
UN Me – You play one of seven previous UN Secretary-Generals negotiating their way along the canteen at UN Headquarters and their famously obstinate serving staff. Can you as U Thant successful persuade Marge from Brooklyn to give you a second helping of mashed swedes? Will you as Kofi Annan sweet-talk Dorothy into ignoring the fact you brought your own carton of orange juice, despite it clearly stating on all doors into the canteen that only food and drink bought in the canteen can be consumed within the canteen? Will you as Boutros Boutros-Ghali or your friend as Ban Ki-moon get the last raspberry jelly pot before Pam clears it away ready for the tea-time sitting (“lunch is over by 2pm, gentlemen!“)?
Who Framed Roget’s Rabbit? – Players compete to come up with as many synonyms for ‘rabbit’ as they can within the space of ninety seconds. The winner is given the title of ‘Bob Hoskins’, and gets to choose the next game or the phone number of Jessica Rabbit.
Invade Whipsnade – Chaos at Whipsnade Zoo as Venusians seek to round up all the wallabies and fly them back to Venus as tribute to their queen. You play the zookeepers whose job it is save the wallabies. This can be done in several different ways: hiding them under traffic cones; painting them yellow and pretending that they’re cheese; trying to convince the Venusians that the reticulated giraffes are in fact the wallabies, just seen from much closer up; or claiming that there’s just been a misprint and that the Venusians are in fact at a Whitesnake concert.
You have six rounds to last until Michaela Strachan turns up and admonishes the Venusians, who retreat in ignominious embarrassment at having upset Michaela.
Is it Hake? – Players take turns to flip over cards that have fish on their front and declare whether or not they are hake. Each round lasts thirty seconds and players gain points for every hake they successfully identify, but lose points for every non-hake fish they label as hake. Several expansions for the game are due to come out during 2026: ‘Is it Drake?’ where players have to successfully identify portraits of the sixteenth century English sailor; ‘Is it Jake?’ where players have to successfully identify Mr Gyllenhaal; and ‘Is it Makemake?’ where players have to successfully identify the dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt from other non-descript lumps of rock.
Lactose Intolerance – a game that has at its heart the concept of racist cheese. The board is in fact a cheese board – you play either ‘gouda’, ‘brie’, ‘cheddar’ or ‘stilton’, and then demand that the other cheeses be deported back to the fridge to leave a ‘pure cheeseboard’ – one that is ultimately bereft of choice, variety or interest.
Hungry Hungry Episcopalians! – built around the same premise as the eponymous ‘hippo’ original, the players here compete to consume the most post-Communion service biscuits.
Ring Around A-Moses – As a player you have Aaron’s staff and use it to redirect traffic around Cirencester before all ten plagues are unleashed. Each ensuing plague makes the redirecting of traffic more difficult as, for example, the frogs clog up the one-way system on Cricklade Street, and the river of blood pours down Market Place, meaning you have to navigate to the town hall a completely different way.
Dungeons & Drag Queens – an outrageous role-playing game in which someone, as the gamesmaster, narrates a group of players through a series of scenarios. Players choose their character’s Drag species and class, such as Barbarian Glamour Queen, Paladin Faux Queen, or Warlock Pageant Queen, then will embark on an extravagant quest, governed by the Gamesmaster or ‘The La Rue’, where they will endeavour to throw shade on orcs, werk wolves, dust demons, all with sickening style, before relaxing at a post-quest kiki. All such combats are of course decided with a D-20. Throw a ‘1’ or ‘2’ and the Gamesmaster will read you; ‘3 to 8’ and they’re going to label you a Bar Queen; get into the teens with the die and you may just be fishy enough to trick a horde into thinking you’re the a significant sage. If you roll a ‘20’ all the goblins sashay away.
As you can see, board games have really blossomed and broadened in their scope and scale over the past twenty years, appealing to the full spectrum of social outcasts and introverted malcontents, as well as peeking the interest of more mainstream humans who previously would have declared the hobby toxically unattractive and purely the domain of virgin-dweebs. Games such as ‘Golden Girls Mortal Combat’ in which Estelle Getty can wield nunchucks and Betty White knows how to eviscerate a man with a pen, have bridged generations, genders and concepts of indecency to unite communities. Whereas, ‘Alumni Newsletter Murders’ and ‘Babylon Baby’ have tapped into the cultural zeitgeist and bled it dry. And with the rise in AI, humanity, when not scrabbling for the last vestiges of the planet’s resources, will increasingly have more and more spare time to fritter away bickering over the interpretation of the rules in ‘Apocalyptic Florist’ and claiming that Barbara cheated by not declaring a ‘reinforced gusset’ card in ‘Hangman’s Hernia’.
Treatises of Gloria 